24708 - Architectural and Urban Composition I

Learning outcomes

The student applies to the case study the knowledge about the constant elements of development of western cities, buildings and public spaces, obtaining directions to the urban design.

Course contents

The work is focused on the regeneration of urban parts of cities developed in Italy in the post-war period, which have had different modes and results depending on the different cultures and territorial realities.

Because of the Italian urban government in the 1950s and 1960s, our cities, especially small and medium centers, have grown up without architectural and planning rules. Alongside the historic districts, parts of cities have been constructed with striking impacts, with residential buildings with little constructive and aesthetic value, with not coherent densities with the potential of later urban development. Regulatory Plans have consolidated in the 1970's these urban portions, as dense urban parts, excluded from the idea of a historic city as well as that of a modern city, and subjected to a rapid construction and urban deterioration.

The districts’s position in relation to the historic city and the important infrastructural axes requires urgent their formal upgrading. Should be done an organic rethinking of these neighborhoods and of the overall forma urbis. Public space, nowadays not considered in the structure of Italian cities, can regenerate the identity and the urban landscape of these neighborhoods.

The course would like to study, from a theoretical and design point of view, the possibility of refurbishing some of the neighborhoods created in the first decades of the postwar period, comparing architecture, knowledge of history and aesthetics of architecture. By focusing on the historical and aesthetic reasons of contemporary urban identity, it is possible to make plans for the historic city and urban transformations.

Lab’s activity will be applied to several districts of an Italian city, chosen for each individual student or for a small group of two or three students. Project analysis and design, although linked by a common method and intervention strategy, will be differentiated by geographical, cultural and administrative status of the various cities examined. Students will be required to develop knowledge and to formulate work hypotheses on the chosen case, which will make it possible to develop a project or purely theoretical work in the degree thesis.

Readings/Bibliography

- Adolf Loos, Parole nel vuoto, Adelphi, Milano 1972

- Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Esperienza dell'architettura, Einaudi, Torino 1958

- Aldo Rossi, L'architettura della città, Marsilio, Padova 1966

- O. M. Ungers, Architettura come tema, Quaderni di Lotus, Electa, Milano 1982

Teaching methods

The laboratory will proceed by lectures, seminars, analysis activities, and design on the different case studies. Frontal lectures will be drawn up in direct contact with the students, in some cases will be enclosed by discussion seminars on bibliographic materials. A seminar presenting the state of progress of work will be done before the winter holiday break. Weekly will be made reviews of the analysis and design.

Assessment methods

The final test will be carried out with a collective presentation, submitted by each student for the part of their own competence, of results achieved in the analysis and project activity about different case studies. The committee will be composed of all the teachers of the laboratory.

Each student must have acquired the necessary conceptual tools for the degree thesis and a sufficient degree of progress in the analytical and design work of each case study.

The materials needed to support the exam are:

- analytical drawings on selected case studies

- critical writings on selected case studies and bibliography of the course;

- elaborate graphs on the pre-design tutorial for the thesis

- Models

- collective laboratory dossier with the collection of materials developed during the course.

Teaching tools

Lectures through slides projection, audio and / or video reproductions, practical exercises directly related to the theme of urban representation, collective seminars, study trips.
The lecture material will made available electronically in the way indicated at the beginning of the laboratory.

Office hours

See the website of Martina D'Alessandro